** HALLA ** Psion hits licensing trail with Motorola
Psion licenses processor to Motorola; Halla deal is first for Psion with more to follow. Roy Rubenstein
Psion has licensed its Halla processor to Motorola, a first for the company and a business move which could prove highly lucrative for the UK firm.
The deal is part of a cross-licensing agreement between the two, who are also partners in the Symbian wireless Internet software venture. Licensing Halla provides Motorola with a chip tailored to run Symbian's EPOC operating system.
"We recognise that if EPOC is going to be successful, there is going to be a large market," said a Psion spokesman. "The [licensing] opportunity goes way beyond Motorola."
The spokesman would not comment on whether Psion is in licensing discussions with other Symbian partners or EPOC operating system licensees.
"What is distinctive about Halla is the level of integration," Mark Gretton, chief technical officer at Psion told Electronics Weekly. It features an ARM920 core, a memory management unit and a range of peripherals. "We've taken a number of design choices in close collaboration with Symbian," said Gretton. This includes fast context switch registers which "greatly enhances EPOC's operating speed".
Halla will come in two flavours, trading operating voltage and clock speed with power consumption. "The target is 1.65V/150MHz and 2V/200MHz."
Psion is also working with silicon intellectual property company SSL which is doing the engineering work for Halla. "SSL's got ARM experience and a large design team in Dublin," said Gretton.
The name Halla continues Psion's tradition of internally naming its project devices after mountains. "Halla is the tallest mountain in Korea: Samsung will be fabricating the device," said Gretton, scotching any link with Brian Halla, CEO of National Semiconductor.
In return, Psion has licensed Motorola's latest triple-band GSM technology. Operating at 900, 1,800 or 1,900MHz, this will enable a wireless information device to operate in 142 countries.
The agreement with Motorola builds on an earlier alliance involving the joint development of mobile Internet access devices.
The first mobile Internet access devices co-developed by the two will be launched in the first half of next year. |
